Readings:	Genesis 14:18-20 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 Luke 9:11b-17
Date:	June 22, 2025 - The Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ, Cycle C

Almost fifty years ago, the year after we moved here from NJ, my oldest daughter, Kristin, was in the first communion class. My wife Betsy and I were asked to help out by teaching the class. That year was the first year that St. Isidore involved the parents in their child's first communion/first penance formation. It turned out to be a very challenging year since this really was the first time after all the changes introduced by Vatican Council II that these parents had a chance to ask questions and voice concerns. And that they did. So many of the classes saw mostly me staying after the class to deal with these questions and concerns, while Betsy and Kristin would leave to go relieve the baby sitter. A few classes before the date of their first communion, we handed out several unconsecrated hosts to the families so that the children could get familiar with the taste and texture before actually receiving communion. I was alone with Kristin that class so I gave her the zip lock bag with the hosts and told her to wait for me in the car. After I managed to deal with all the after class issues, I got out to the car, and we headed home. As we were going down 117 to Hudson Road, Kristin said sheepishly, "I ate one of the hosts." as if she thought I would be mad. I said, "That's great. That is why we gave you them. What did you think?" She paused just a moment and then said, "Now I know what happens when the priest says those words over the hosts during Mass." My heart swelled up and I thought, wow, all the effort Betsy and I had put in had paid off. I said, "What happens?" Kristin replied, "This Styrofoam turns to bread!". I was just turning left onto Hudson Road at that moment, and it was a miracle that I didn't go off the road.

As Catholics, we are truly blessed because we have been entrusted with the real Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity. The term Body of Christ, or Corpus Christi in Latin, means both the Church and the Eucharist. How do we make sense of this. One commentator I read said that what unites the Church, the people of God, and makes them the Body of Christ is the Eucharist which is Christ himself. He went on to say that the two terms are related but in a way that may be opposite from what we think. The Eucharist makes the Church, not the other way around. Because the Eucharist is Christ own self, it is in the feeding on Christ's own flesh and blood that we Catholics are formed in to members of the mystical Body of Christ. The Eucharist is not just a symbol or a ceremony, or a thing that the Catholic Church does. The Church is formed into and sustained as the real presence of Christ here and now by the Eucharist, by Catholics becoming what they eat.

All three of our readings remind us how holy and sacred is this most ordinary and human of actions: sharing a meal. Jesus could have picked any of hundreds of ways for us to remember him and to continue his mission, and he picked this way: to share himself with us as food for our body as well as for our spirit, and to do this in the context of a shared meal: Feeding each other, giving drink to each other, nourishing each other, healing each other. In sharing the Eucharist, doing this in memory of Christ, we become the Body and Blood of Christ. Our mission is to spread that good news, to build up the Body and Blood of God's anointed one, until it encompasses the whole universe, until we all become one in Christ. That is God's plan. And we are the means He has chosen to make it happen. That is why it is so very important to be Catholic, in other words to be formed into the Body of Christ through baptism, confirmation and Eucharist. Because God is a lover not a dictator. The only way God will bring everything into one in Christ is by attracting them to become one, not by forcing them. So what I understand the Church's teaching to mean now is that through the sacraments of initiation: Baptism, Confirmation, and Eucharist, the body of Christ grows and strengthens in this world so it can attract others into a relationship with Christ. As the Incarnation reveals to us, this real presence of Christ in human form is essential to God's plan for sharing his eternal life.

Being Catholic means understanding that our faith, our religion, our call is not simply to get to heaven, but to be the Body of Christ, the incarnation of God's love here in this world so that God can complete his plan to bring all things to one in Christ, five loaves and two fishes at a time. I would suggest that this starts with our firm and foundational belief that the Eucharist is Christ. Christ himself calls us to share in his flesh and blood, and then, having become his body and blood, go back out into the world to share that belief, not by what we say but by how we live out that belief.